Neil Young calls for boycott against non-organic cotton

Young recently announced he is teaming up with Rainforest Connection to set up a network of solar-powered mobile phones that alert guards to illegal logging activity. According to a story on Rolling Stone, old cellphones are retrofitted with a solar-powered energy source and placed in trees around the rainforest. “Current detection systems rely on satellites which show rainforest destruction days or weeks too late,” says a note on the group’s Kickstarter page. “Our system provides the world’s first real-time logging/poaching detection system. We can pinpoint deforestation activity the moment it begins, while simultaneously streaming the data openly and immediately to anyone around the world.”

Now, Young has published a post on his website, saying “Today, I have taken the steps to remove sales of non-organic t-shirts and other products that damage the Earth from my concerts and my web stores. I vow to speak up & to do what I can to PROTECT EARTH.”

Young then provides a bulletpoint list about cotton production, including:

“** Cotton is second for most pesticide use of all crops & it uses 25% of all of the petrochemical based pesticides, fungicides and herbicides globally
** In the US, it takes about 1/3 of a pound of pesticides and herbicides to grow enough conventional cotton for just one T-shirt.
** The Environmental Protection Agency considers seven of the top 15 pesticides used on cotton in the United States as “possible,” “likely,” “probable,” or “known” human carcinogens (acephate, dichloropropene, diuron, fluometuron, pendimethalin, tribufos, and trifluralin)
** These chemicals absorb into the soil which can affect nearby crops, get into water supplies and rivers and affect many lifeforms downstream
** 2,700 liters of water is used to grow the cotton for just 1 t-shirt!!!( & that doesn’t even account for the processing dying etc….)”

Young – who will headline Farm Aid along with Jack White, Willie Nelson on September 13 in Raleigh, North Carolina – also offers tips on laundry care.

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